Her brother had always wanted that perfect life. A wife and two point five kids, a job everyone respected. “Had you not talked about it before? How could she not tell you?”
“She was afraid. I know she should have been upfront about it, but I also know her. She was afraid of losing me. She thought I would walk away, and who knows. Maybe I would have in the beginning. I took some time to think about it because I really did want kids.”
“You can still have kids.”
He shook his head, but it was a rueful expression. “I wanted my kids. I wanted kids who looked like me and her. I thought a long time about this because we could still have biological kids. We could have them with a surrogate. But I wanted our kid. That was when I realized I was a moron and I looked around. I see kids who need parents every day. It doesn’t matter how they come into our home. All that matters is that when they grow up, they will have a piece of me and a piece of her. They’ll be ours. We’re getting married and we’ve decided to adopt. Shawna has been taking classes for how to deal with special-needs kids.”
She stared at him, the idea almost unbelievable. Shawna did not seem deep enough to do something like that.
He frowned her way as though he knew exactly what she’d been thinking. “You don’t know her. I know you think she’s an airhead, but when she cares about something, she takes it seriously.” He took a long breath and seemed to shake something off. “Anyway, I’m telling you all of this because our mother hasn’t completely accepted it yet.”
She was actually shocked she hadn’t heard about this from her mother. Her mom wasn’t known for keeping secrets. “The idea of you adopting?”
“She’s still pushing for us to have a baby using a surrogate. She can’t wrap her head around the idea that her grandkids might not look like her.”
This was exactly what bugged her about her mother. She didn’t understand why Brian put up with it. “Doesn’t that make you mad?”
“It’s how Mom is,” he replied with a sigh. “It takes time for her to change her thinking. Do you remember how Mom used to talk all the time about how marriage is between a man and a woman and it shouldn’t be any other way?”
She vaguely remembered it. Mostly she remembered the rest of the family giving her mom hell about how she’d changed. They teased her, but her mother simply said she didn’t recall saying anything like it. “She came around on that. The last I remember she was going to a Pride Parade. I don’t remember how that happened.”
“Her sister finally came out. Mom doesn’t get it until it personally affects her. Then she’s on floats waving pro-lesbian signs and rewriting history. Once she meets that first kid, she’ll love him or her and she’ll tell everyone it was her idea.”
It was typical. Right out of her mother’s playbook. “How can that not bother you?”
“Because love is love and I don’t question how we get there. Just so we do get there. Probably because I’m far more like Mom than I want to admit. Because in some ways I understand her. Because Shawna managed to forgive me.” He took a sip of his drink. “When are you going to forgive us and come home, Roxanne? When are you going to stop punishing us?”
“I’m not punishing anyone. I didn’t have a job anymore. And don’t say it was all my doing. I quit because I had to. Joel had taken over my career. He was pushing me to a place I didn’t want to go.”
“But you didn’t come to me. You didn’t talk to Dad.”
“I talked to Mom.” That might have been her biggest mistake. “She told me I should take the Staten Island position and work on my marriage.”
He groaned. “I worried it was something like that. She gives the only advice she knows. If you had come to me, I would have tried to help. I probably could have gotten you on somewhere, but you wouldn’t even pick up the phone when I called.”
A little guilt bubbled up inside her. She didn’t like the feeling. “You were friends with Joel.”
Brian stared at her as though he could will her to believe what he said next. “But I’m your brother. I’m your family. Again, I know we’re not close, but damn, Roxie, I wish you would have trusted me even a little.”
She hadn’t even thought about it. She’d only talked to her mother because she’d needed a place to stay when she’d left Joel. She’d spent a single night before she’d moved in with a friend while she waited to hear back about a job.